When I taught ethics at a university, I brought this topic up with my class, and was horrified to discover that virtually every student who worked in a pharmacy believed that they had an unlimited right to deny pain medications to anyone who “could be an addict.” When I asked how they knew, one answer was, “You can just tell,” and the other was, “It’s in the computer.” Well, how did they know that was accurate? It didn’t seem to matter. What mattered was the tiny bit of power they were wielding and the enormous bit of good they thought they were doing. They had no understanding whatsoever of the underlying medical or physiological issues. It was a sobering experience, and it repeated itself every semester for years.
It was impossible for one person to fight all of that dogmatism. I never knew how well I got through to them, or to how many. The sad thing is that many of the nursing students got the same message in their nursing classes. There’s just an extraordinary amount of indoctrination on the subject, much of it driven by the DEA, law enforcement generally, and the media.
Filed under: General Problems
I keep thinking that If the situation surrounding pain medicines doesn’t turn around pretty damn soon, each willing prescriber who still treats with proper doses of pain meds is aging and many are retiring, it’s almost gone totally. As this occurs legacy patients are doomed because the younger Drs and Pharmacists have been totally indoctrinated with all the lies. It is so bad and frankly very scary. I also keep thinking, my God what is it going to take to reverse this dire situation and reverse the damage done by this agenda. Will it ever happen, probably not in my life time.
Why do these students feel this way? Something is going wrong in the education process indeed.
Educated guess – these are students that have some working in a pharmacy history – so our society – media – DEA – influence of pharmacists/techs they have worked with – other professors they have had.